her so nonchalantly such strange questions. In many ways this delicate
creature's words seemed to echo Dr. Stanchon's, and this seemed all the
more natural, now, since she was so obviously still his patient.
Hester had said that he sent many there--this one was perhaps too frail
ever to leave them, and felt so much at home that no one thought to
speak of her.

A healthy hunger checked these musings, and more amused than irritated
at such unusual desertion, she bathed and dressed unaided and went down
to the kitchen.

"They will soon see by the way I keep my temper, now," she thought,
"and my strength, that I am quite able to go back. I really must see
how the children are getting on."

Following the ways of her last journey through the house she found the
kitchen, where an oven-door ajar and a half-dozen small, fragrant
loaves in the opening showed her that though empty, the room was
deserted only for a housewife's rapid moment. She sat down therefore
beneath the patient old clock, and waited. Soon she heard a quick,
bustling step, unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of
Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh and tidy as a
clean withered apple, was their mother. She had a pan of new-picked
peas in one arm and a saucer of milk balanced in the other hand,
plainly the breakfast for the sleek black cat that bounded in beside
her. This she set carefully on a flagstone corner before she noticed
her visitor, it seemed, and yet she did not appear startled at company,
and showed all of the younger women's untroubled ease as she explained
that a message from Dr. Stanchon had called them both away suddenly,
very early.

"It was perhaps some other patient in the house?" the guest suggested
curiously, with a vivid memory of the grey lady's frail white hand and
breathless voice.

"Perhaps," said the old woman equably, and tied a checked apron over
the white one, the better to attack the peas.

From the shining pan she tossed the fairy green globes into the rich
yellow bowl of earthenware at her side, with the quick ease of those
veined, old hands that outwork the young ones, and her guest watched
her in silence for a few minutes, hypnotised, almost, by the steady
pit-pat of the little green balls against the bowl.

"And when do you expect them back?" she asked finally.

"I don't know," said the old lady, "but they'll be back as soon as the
work is over, you may depend--they don't la